


errata

by cyanocorax



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-10
Updated: 2018-04-10
Packaged: 2019-04-21 01:18:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14273820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cyanocorax/pseuds/cyanocorax
Summary: “They would process my neural pathways and digitally extract whatever is useful.Archive the rest.Most efficient use of resources.”





	errata

 

 

 

 

 

File.OpenFile HilbertA

archive > s8ej1923dfw > Misc.

 

 

 

 

 

The eggs in the refrigerator go bad on day 396. The smell takes him back, briefly, to Volgograd, before the entire carton is upended into the incinerator and he’s here once more. _Hephaestus. Deep space._ Eiffel makes terrible joke as he pinches his nose shut with one end of the jumper cables looped around his shoulder. “I do not like green eggs and ham, I do not like them Sam-I-”   

 

.

 

“Samuel Lambert. Communications Officer.”

“Pleasure.” He is wearing his good face, the one he took out for official portraits an hour ago, and he is speaking his good English, where the words come out like squares instead of circles. Somewhere in the background Captain Lovelace is wrapping her arms around Hui and Fourier, telling the photographer _it’s time for the silly one!_ “Doctor Elias Selberg.” Almost.

“Funny. You weren’t at any of the mandatory orientation meetings,” Lambert says, his nose crinkling. Stress on _mandatory_. Haircut looks like it was copy-pasted from regulation handbook.

“No.”

Lambert’s nose collapses in onto itself. Behind him, Captain Lovelace screams with laughter. “You know,” Lambert is saying, “human resources—”

 

.

 

“Human resources will take care of the rest.”

He makes Goddard staff nervous. Carter said he would stand out “like sore thumb” in Florida, but perhaps not even Carter could have predicted this. Big Russian man with big, bald Russian head and big, thick Russian accent coming out of it. Filling out forms while — 

On the television in the corner they cycle the same three clips of men crawling onto the cracked remains of the wall with their arms swinging over their heads. Like cheering fans at sports match.  

The secretary moves papers from one end of the desk to the other, then back again. 

“When do I start?”

“Uh… Well, that’s really outside of payroll’s hands. Upstairs just tells us when to start mailing the, uh, you know. The checks.” 

_Tfu._ Perhaps they all think there is no such thing as “checks” where he comes from. Only ration cards and little books with Lenin’s face on cover.  

The whole building smells like cigarette smoke. He wants to leave. More than that, he wants to break the television. He has —

 

.

 

“— nothing to do but watch TV all day.” Eiffel takes another long slurp of coffee. “But, I guess you didn’t exactly have Brady Bunch reruns back in —” he puts his hand over his heart and intones, “Muzzer Rasha.” 

“Guess is correct.” 

Eiffel, intent on making friendly since they first stepped off the shuttle, prattles on as he drifts about the lab. Past few days have been an endless stream of unsolicited personal anecdotes in the futile hope that Hilbert would reciprocate. No amount of silence, or reminding him of his own list of duties — calibrating communication instruments, assisting with greenhouse maintenance, _updating star charts_ — convinces him to let well enough alone. Would almost be admirable, if it weren’t so…

“So what _did_ you have? ‘Communism for Kiddies,’ with the b _iii_ g bad Mr. Moneybags?” 

Hilbert snorts and slashes the knife through another layer of packing tape. “No such thing.” Inside the box, flasks and tubes click gently against one another as he sifts through them, searching for cracks. 

Somewhere behind him, Eiffel sucks last drops of coffee from his pouch before crumpling the cup up in one hand. He twirls the ball of plastic, lets it drift, takes in the novelty. He is not half as strong as Fisher. And not nearly as strong willed as Lambert. Of all the people to put through process of having a volatile retrovirus pumped through their veins, Communications Officer Douglas Eiffel is the last person on Earth Hilbert would have chosen. 

“Officer Eiffel.” He finishes stacking the glassware in their racks and starts thinking about getting monitors up and running. “If you are not here to help me set up laboratory then _please_ …”

“Alright, alright. But don’t think this is the end of it. I’ll crack you if it’s the last thing I do.” He runs a hand through his floating mop of hair and clicks his tongue against his teeth as he wafts out the door. “Daaaa sveedan-ya, comrade—”

 

.

 

 

“Comrade Volodin. You’ve been very quiet this evening.”  

All these children smoke too much. The room is nothing but a thick haze of yellow fumes and headless bodies, far too warm for comfort. Men and women all sweat and blur into one another until all that remains is a faint veil of bodies, and the hundreds of little sounds they all make. Proof of life. 

“My apologies, Comrade. My mind was elsewhere.” 

Somewhere behind him, Viktor Alexievich clicks his tongue against his teeth disapprovingly. Dmitri sits up a little straighter, resists the urge to turn around. “Comrade Volodin is too busy thinking about bacteria to talk about _The_ _German Ideology_.”   

The room lights up with snickering. “This is dangerous, Dmitri Ilyich,” says an unfamiliar voice in the smoke. “Bacteria are known Stalinist sympathizers.” 

“Enough.” Chairs are shuffled about. Papers rustled. “We might as well move on to the latest out of Czechoslovakia.”

He knows where this is headed. They will all get drunk and yell about how the _true_ Russian revolution is dead, but _they_ will be the ones to bring it back from the grave, and someone will pour him enough vodka that he might even join them. Eventually, Viktor Alexievich will try to make him turn around again. It will not be difficult. He is a pretty boy, with blue-black hair and an eager mouth. Perhaps the only reason Dmitri still comes, every Wednesday night, to this tar-stained basement beneath the graduate student apartments, instead of staying inside his lab where he belongs.

“Don’t let me distract you,” Viktor is saying. He has leaned forward so that the heat of his breath hovers like a cloud on the back of Dmitri’s neck. 

“Hm. You —” 

 

.

 

“Already have, Doctor.” Minkowski brushes a few stray strands of hair out of her eyes and straightens her back. “Let’s do this.”

He turns on clippers first, then vacuum, then presses the fingers of his left hand against the base of her skull, tilting her forward, and starts shaving a broad path through her mess of short, brown curls. 

_Bzt. Bzzzt._ The vacuum catches most of it, but a few escapees float up lazily towards the ceiling. Minkowski watches them go. “Thank you Hilbert,” she says. “I’d do it myself, but the last time I —”

“Is no problem, Commander. Happy to be of assistance.” 

“Hm. Now, the real feat would be getting Eiffel in this chair.”

“Could make him clean out clogged drain. Face consequences of his decisions.” He presses down her ear to detach another soft clump and feels her stiffen. _Hm._

_Bzzzt._ She licks her lips. _Bzt. Bzt. Bzt._ “Soo, uh. How’s the… plants… coming?”

“No need to make chit-chat if you do not want to, Commander.” He turns the clippers off and drifts around to hand her the mirror. “We are finished.”  

“Oh!” She runs a hand over the back of her head, makes a sound like sandpaper. “Oh, well done, Doctor. That’s much better. Have you done this before?” 

He picks a stray clump of her hair from the sleeve of his jumpsuit. Thinks a little while about what to say as he rolls it between his fingers. 

“No.”

The strands come apart—

 

.

 

—in the center of her palm. Long, dark, brittle. “Don’t cry, Dima, look. Look, we’re going to look like brother and sister again.” She has her arms around him as he perches in her lap. “See? We’re _two_ bald imps now. We live in the city for the time being, but once it’s summer we’ll go live in the forest with the Leshy. Do you still remember the Leshy? Remember the poem?” 

His voice is small and captured somewhere in his chest. “Th-there in her mortar… sweeping beneath the skies… _Eee!_ ”

“ _The demon Baba Yaga flies_!” she squeals, and tickles his ribs. “ _There_ , Tsar Koschei, he _wastes_ away—”

 

.

 

“‘Koschei Besmertnyy’? That’s a very dramatic mouthful, for a retrovirus. And superstitious to boot. 

“We should name it after a Soviet scientist.”

“We should name it after the program director. That way when we get caught—” 

“Feh! _If_ we get caught.”

“All of you be quiet. As senior researcher I have the last word and _I_ say that is what it is called.” 

“Dmitri Ilyich, you can’t be serious. We’re naming the most dangerous retrovirus known to man after a children’s fairy tale?” 

“After we’re done here it will no longer be—”

“And it’s _Pushkin_ , Pavel Ivanovich, you uneducated swine. You know: _poetry._ Where did you grow up, the inside of a petri dish?”

“Woman, you will not take such tones with _me_.”

“Alright. _Alright_. We’re done for the evening.”

“Yes, Doctor Senior Researcher.”

“ _Snrk_.”

“Same time tomorrow. And don’t forget—”

 

.

 

“Don’t forget to do exercises I showed you.” There are tears in her eyes, welling up into unstable orbs that cling to the edges of her cheeks. He ignores them, keeps stretching her arm, pushing, pulling. “It will be much worse for much longer otherwise.”

“Yes, doctor.” The muscles in her neck jump with the pain.

“Otherwise, you are making good progress. All superficial injuries have healed. No significant scarring.” She closes her eyes. The water floats away from her, drifts around the lab. Beneath his hands he feels her stretched tight as a rubber band and finally stops. “Captain.”  

“Don’t.” A long, deep breath. In. Out. “Whatever you’re about to say. Just. Don’t.” 

“…Very well.” He sets her arm down in her lap and unstraps her from examination table. “That’s all for today.”

She has yet to look him in the face. Her whole body has crumpled into itself as if someone has pulled the air from her. He has never seen her look so alone. So like a small child. So… 

Sobbing. Long, messy, full-throated. So violent he briefly wonders if her back won’t snap in half. He does not move. He waits for it to pass, and hands her a towel. Waits while she wipes the snot from her nose and the moisture from her eyes, and presses her whole face into the soft white fabric. Long, deep breath. In. Out.

Finally: “This smells… like… shit.”

“My sincere apologies.”

When the towel moves aside, she’s a version of herself again. Smiles. “You look like someone just hit you very hard in the face, doctor.” Hands the towel back. “Here. Happy birthday. And… thank you. Elias.”

 

.

 

“Selberg. Elias Selberg.” It does not sound like him. He will have to make it sound like him. He frowns at himself in mirror. Two names only, like American. Or, fatherless Russian. _Funny joke. Everybody laughs._  

“Doctor Elias Selberg.” Selberg, Selberg. Someone at Goddard has a bad sense of humor. 

He straightens his face. Stands up tall.  

Doctor. 

That part, he keeps. Only thing that matters. 

Only thing to make it out alive. 

**Author's Note:**

> [screams internally]


End file.
